Tag Archives: coal

One month into the Trump era, the number of new jobs in coal mining remains steady, at zero.

Now comes word that employment in the oil patch is declining and not coming back. The problem: automation.

When will we figure out — and acknowledge — that these industries are dying a natural death. There is no need to look for scapegoats like liberals, regulators, environmentalists. Congress should act quickly to flood the states dependent on coal and oil with money for income support and for retraining those folks for decent jobs in renewables or in other fields.

Near the head of the line of interest groups who supported President Trump in the election and who now want favors is the coal industry. In the first few days of the new Congress, both the House and Senate wasted no time in giving a green light to surface mining companies to resume their dirty ways. Both houses have passed legislation to reverse the “Stream Protection Rule” — which does pretty much what it says. But evidently, that regulation was just too burdensome for the coal industry.

Make no mistake: the pollution that results from lifting this rule will not harm the “coastal elites” who opposed Trump in the election. No, the pollution will go into the streams in Coal Country, where voters (well, white ones anyway) voted for Trump in big numbers. He is literally fouling their waters.

With friends like that, does the white working class really need enemies?

Trump at a campaign rally last October in Pennsylvania. Photo by BU alum Dominick Reuter, AFP/Getty

This week in fossil fuels brings a front-page story in the NYTimes reporting on a fiasco in Mississippi to spin straw into gold: a giant “clean coal” project that failed.

If anyone still thinks coal can be used cleanly, here’s a tip: pick up a lump of coal sometime. Carry it around. Try sharing it with others. Put it under your pillow. Go into a small room with the windows closed and burn it.

You will be sick of it in less time than it takes to read that Times story.

The world cannot stop mining and burning coal fast enough. Just stop. There are other ways.

In today’s news, the headline is the decision by Peabody, the largest coal producer in the U.S., to file for bankruptcy.

Value of stock shares in Peabody (stock symbol BTU)

That step, combined with the recent prison sentence imposed on Massey’s top boss in pro-coal West Virginia, signals the collapse of coal as an economically viable fuel and the demise of coal as a political force in the states where it has long been a factor. (Are you listening Mitch McConnell?)

Those are the headlines. The trend they reflect is a decisive step away from burning carbon. There are now far more jobs in the U.S. in the emerging renewable-energy sector than in the moribund coal industry.

King Coal is dead.

At the funeral, I’d like to hear “Paradise” by John Prine:

“Paradise”When I was a child my family would travelDown to Western Kentucky where my parents were bornAnd there’s a backwards old town that’s often rememberedSo many times that my memories are worn.

[Chorus:]And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg CountyDown by the Green River where Paradise layWell, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in askingMister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away

Well, sometimes we’d travel right down the Green RiverTo the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie HillWhere the air smelled like snakes and we’d shoot with our pistolsBut empty pop bottles was all we would kill.

[Chorus]

Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovelAnd they tortured the timber and stripped all the landWell, they dug for their coal till the land was forsakenThen they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

[Chorus]

When I die let my ashes float down the Green RiverLet my soul roll on up to the Rochester damI’ll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin’Just five miles away from wherever I am.

The bond rating agency Fitch expects coal companies to struggle in the future. “The sector default rate is likely to increase further in the near term,” its analysts wrote in a note to investors Monday.

–How hard do advocates of fossil fuels fight? Pretty hard, according to this NYT story. (Don’t miss the comments.)

In a related development, TNR comments on the GOP response to Obama. A sample, from Kentucky’s Sen. Mitch McConnell:

“I am not going to sit by while the White House takes aim at the lifeblood of our state’s economy,” the Kentucky senator said. The new regulations, he argued, would mean “fewer jobs, shuttered power plants, and higher electricity costs for families and businesses.”

Problem is, there are only about 6,000 coal-mining jobs in Kentucky.

Not only that, but we have to ask: WHAT IS THE IDEAL NUMBER OF COAL MINING JOBS ON THE PLANET? (I’d say it should approach the number of whale-oil harpooneers.)

–I wasn’t sure whether Newsweek was still in business, but here’s a science lesson.

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Thanks a lot, SCOTUS! In an otherwise welcome flurry of decisions, the Court issued a ruling that means continued emissions from coal-fired power plants and continued release of mercury into the environment. Isn’t it obvious that Congress created the EPA to protect the environment and the people who live in it?

From the Times:

Writing for the majority, in the 5-to-4 decision, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: “It is not rational, never mind ‘appropriate,’ to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits. Statutory context supports this reading.”

If possible, Scalia has topped himself here in being not only wrong but also belligerent and hypocritical. He has done no cost-benefit analysis himself, so he does not know if the EPA’s action would cost “billions” while yielding only “a few dollars” in benefits. What is the long-term, total cost to society of all that pollution? Does he know? No, he does not. Plus, he justifies his view on the basis of “statutory context.” How about that? In other recent rulings, he has lectured his colleagues on the importance of ignoring “statutory context” in favor of what he calls “originalism” or (when it suits his purposes) something he calls “textualism.”

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Another week, another episode of harm to the planet and to individual human beings.

A child tries to protect himself from the air pollution in New Delhi. Credit Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times, via Getty Images

—Here is a heartbreaking account of one family’s struggle with the air pollution in India (granted, some of India’s air pollution is not caused by burning fossil fuels, but we know where most of it comes from — burning coal). Of course, this story involves a family from the developed world with every advantage, so imagine how miserable life is for the typical, poor Indian.

–The world’s largest “sovereign wealth fund” (that’s an investment vehicle created by a government to make money for its public-employee pensions, for example) has decided to divest from coal. Norway is taking that step in part because of the “feel-good” politics of voting against polluters that many liberal polities would find appealing. But I suspect that it also reflects a dawning awareness among all economic players: All the world’s coal companies are based on ownership of an asset (coal) that is destined to decline in value. Which raises a question for all parties who invest in coal and oil, too: what is the economic sense in owning stock in an industry that is destined to go out of business? That question pertains to individuals, university endowments, wealth managers, everybody.

–In The New Yorker, the redoubtable Elizabeth Kolbert shines a light on the world’s biggest source of coal: the border area between Montana and Wyoming. (“. . .where the skies are not cloudy all day . .”) Guess who owns all that coal? We do!

The Powder River Basin, which stretches over twenty-six thousand square miles of southeastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming, is the largest coal-producing region in the world. Roughly forty per cent of the coal that’s burned in the United States is mined there; this comes to nearly four hundred million tons a year. And there’s plenty more still in the ground. A recent report by the U.S. Geological Survey estimated recoverable reserves in the region at more than a hundred and sixty billion tons.

The federal government owns most of the coal in the Powder River Basin, and leases the land to private companies that mine it for a profit.

So, what are WE going to do about it? Apparently, we are going to do the same thing that China is planning: keep burning coal and set clean-air goals for a half-generation or so from now (i.e., long after most current officials in both countries have retired). Thanks a lot!

–In the inaugural post in this series, I wrote that no journalist covers fossil fuel as a “beat.” Turns out, that’s not quite true. At the Houston Chronicle (no surprise, I guess), the business section has a vertical devoted to covering the oil

That’s a lobster.Credit: Getty

and natural gas business, which they call “Fuel Fix.” It’s a team effort to cover the largest local industry in Houston. It seems to take a fairly deferential attitude toward that industry, which is hardly surprising. It’s reminiscent of the way the Wall Street Journal covers capitalism, or ESPN covers sports. (Fun fact: one of the contributors to “Fuel Fix” is a former student of mine, Josh Cain, who’s identified as a “digital producer.”) “Fuel Fix” is useful as a roundup, but it suffers from the same problem that A.J. Liebling identified when it comes to reading conservative newspapers — it’s like learning to use a rifle that you know has a deviation to the right. You have to “correct” for the misfire. For example, here’s an AP story from the site that follows up on the Santa Barbara spill.

—This one was just too awful: about 100 people in Ghana, seeking refuge from a flood, got killed when a gas station exploded.

–Last (but hardly least) in this week’s roundup is this story from The Nation about how Chevron has a whole country in its grip.

A special hat-tip here to the author, James North, the nom-de-plume for a journalist who has been covering

James North, journalist

the developing world for 40 years — ever since graduating from college a few years ahead of me. (We worked together on the student newspaper.)